University to use furloughs, close between Christmas and New Year’s
By Matt Lockwood : August 31st, 2009Faced with an $8.9 million cut in state support, The University will offset about $1.3 million of that total by mandating employee furloughs and shutting down the University from Monday, Dec. 28, through Thursday, Dec. 31, with the institution’s regular holiday schedule picking back up on Friday, Jan. 1.
Most employees will have one or two unpaid furlough days and will be required to take them Monday, Dec. 28, and Tuesday, Dec. 29. During the other two days that the University is closed that week, employees can use vacation, personal days, comp time or choose to go unpaid.
“The advantage of furloughs is that they help minimize the need for employee layoffs and position the University to recover more quickly when the need for cost-saving measures have diminished,” said UT President Lloyd Jacobs. “Having the furloughs during the holidays is also advantageous because it minimizes the impact on students, and it allows us to turn down the heat and capitalize on energy savings.”
The primary guiding principle of UT’s furlough program is that all benefit-eligible employees will participate, therefore minimizing the impact on any particular employee classifications.
“We must still negotiate the furloughs or the impact of the furloughs with the various unions, but it is our intention that everyone participates,” Jacobs said. “This is a very challenging time economically and we need everyone to be a part of the solution.”
For non-bargained for employees, the furlough program is as follows:
Because furlough days are unpaid, employees’ pay will be reduced by the number of furlough days during that pay period. All Health Science Campus employees and Main Campus hourly employees will see less gross pay in their Jan. 15 checks, and Main Campus salary employees will notice it in their Jan. 1 checks.
The state of Ohio has given all boards of trustees at state institutions the authority to require “mandatory furloughs of employees to achieve spending reductions necessitated by institutional budget deficits.”
UT’s Board of Trustees Finance Committee voted Aug. 24 to recommend approval of a budget amendment, including furloughs, allowing the University to again balance its budget. The full board will consider the amendment Monday, Sept. 21.
August 31st, 2009at 12:40 pm
How will the furlough effect hospital employees? There is no way that a clinical lab can be shut down
for a 4 or 5 day period.
August 31st, 2009at 2:14 pm
Paula, hospital employees will have only one or two days of furlough, just like everybody else. However, due to the nature of UTMC’s 24/7 operation, some hospital employees will take their furlough day as an unpaid holiday, or when the department can best schedule a furlough day the following week. A lot of the details will need to be worked out, but patient care and related services will not be compromised.
August 31st, 2009at 5:00 pm
where is the web page listing the details of what is allowed and what is not allowed during the furlough?
thanks-
August 31st, 2009at 6:41 pm
How is it that the upper management personnel can justify receiveing all that bonus money, and talk of furlough’s? Why not give that money back so that maybe this won’t happen! I thought they are supposed to be supportive of the staff at both campus’
September 1st, 2009at 4:02 pm
This article does not adequately address whether or not a furlough is mandatory for grant-funded positions. Consequently would a furlough apply to grant-funded positions such as lab techs, research assistants, predoctoral researchers, and postdoctoral researchers? Furthermore how would a furlough for grant-funded positions benefit the university unless the wages of the grant-funded positions for the furlough period were paid to the university?
November 15th, 2009at 6:30 am
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